USA, KS: Dodge City Brewing moving forward with construction

It may be taking slightly longer than expected but Dodge City Brewing is still moving forward with construction, the Dodge City Daily Globe reported on April 12.

Located near Third Avenue and Spruce Street, Dodge City Brewing will be the first micro-brewery and one of the only ones in southwest Kansas.

“The closest brewery I think is in Hays,” Dodge City Brewing co-owner Larry Cook said. “Then the closest one to the west is in Pueblo, Colorado. So Dodge City seemed like a good place to be.”

Cook, along with his wife Shari, grew up in the area, both graduated from Dodge City Community College and St. Mary’s of the Plains.

“Shari was a teacher and I worked as a CPA for 17 years,” Cook said. “Then a client got me into craft beer which introduced me to craft brewing.

“Shari and my two sons then pushed me into brewing my own beer and opening up a place.

“Dodge City is ready to have a brewery.”

According to Cook, Dodge City Brewing will have more than 30 recipes ready to use when the business opens and currently have six featured beers called Space Cowboy, Demon Red Ale, Pete’s Brown Ale, Uncle Johnny’s Cream Ale, Samurai Cowboy and Maurice Wit.

“We then traveled to Staten Island, New York, where we attended Goodfella’s Pizza School of New York to learn to make world class pizza,” Cook said. “When we began the plans for the brewery, the city still had the 30 percent food requirement in place for alcohol establishments.

“Even though they voted to change that law we were already half-way done so we kept the food service.”

Dodge City Brewing will serve brick-oven pizza to go along with their micro-beers.

The location of where to put the brewery became a happy coincidence Cook said in regards to being near Boot Hill Distillery.

“We really wanted to be near Boot Hill Museum and the downtown area,” Cook said. “Being near the distillery just became a coincidence but since then we have helped each other.

“Some of our recipes we will use will be with barrel aging from the distillery.

“We want to make a variety of good quality beers with different brewing styles as well as experiment.”

Construction for the brewery did slow some according to Cook but have found assistance once open.

“I have connections with other breweries that we can serve until we are up and ready to do our own,” Cook said.

Shari added, “We may do Kansas beers if ours aren’t quite ready but it will be craft beers only.”

Cook then said, “We will have outside seating and we want to have our feet under us before Dodge City Days rolls around so we are hoping for an early June opening.”

13 April, 2017